The gist of the plan is to offer school districts incentive payments in exchange for them adopting curriculum standards and best in practices regarding instructional day length, in teacher-student rations, in classroom size limits, in professional development and in parental involvement.

But districts receiving those additional funds would then be required to publicly report classroom and student progress data and implement program changes if they fail to show student progress.

“Investing in high-quality pre-k is one of the best investments we can make in education,” Johnson said in a statement.

Farney noted, ”Many of the most at-risk children who are eligible for this valuable program are not able to attend due to the abbreviated half-day schedule that is problematic for working parents to manage.”

It’s likely that we’ll see many more proposals addressing early childhood education this session. In the last year, more politicians — from President Obama to the nation’s mayors — have focused their attention on expanding access to quality pre-K.

Today’s proposal points to results in Dallas that showed that students who attended DISD’s full-day pre-K program pre-K were 3.5 times more likely to be kindergarten ready than those students who didn’t.

Alan Cohen, executive director of Dallas ISD’s early childhood and community partnerships, said he’s hopeful changes will come out of this legislative session.

“It’s particularly exciting that legislators are bringing forward proposals so children can have access to the education they need to be successful throughout their lives,” Cohen said. “For me, full-day pre-K is a no-brainer.”

Before the more than 800 guests entered the ballroom at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for the first ever Extra Yard for Teachers Summit, they had a chance to tell their stories at the I Teach Project booths. Teachers could be videotaped or write their stories online on computers.

Among the many attendees stopping by was Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles. He recorded a video segment.

Then, a few teachers approached him to take a photo with them. He obliged and smiled.

It’s a question that Lee, an East Dallas school with 350 kids and room to grow, is tackling with fresh resolve.

Lee hosted an open house this morning so current parents, prospective parents, and others could learn more. More than 100 people showed up, including two Dallas city councilmen (Philip Kingston and Adam Medrano), two DISD board members (Miguel Solis and Mike Morath), and parents with strollers and babies in tow.

“If we are going to change Robert E. Lee to the best school for this community . . . it’s going to take you, and you taking the first step today,” DISD board president Miguel Solis told the group.

Lee’s boundaries include apartment buildings along with homes priced north of $500,000. More than two-thirds of students come from low-income families. More than a quarter of students are learning English.

Lee has also had three different principals in as many years. Despite so much turnover, several parents said today they’re optimistic about the new leader, veteran DISD educator Bridget Ransom.

“It’s not that the school needs to improve. It just needs more people to know about it, and more parents to be involved,” parent Staci Howie said.

Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles said research shows that more efforts have to be made in early childhood education in order to get all students college and career ready.

Miles said wants Dallas to spend an additional $45 million on pre-K by the year 2020.

“This is not a fad. This is not a trend. This is not a one-time thing, what we call a “flip the switch” initiative,” he said. “Early childhood is important, and it’s going to be something we invest in over the long haul.”

However, it’s not exactly clear where Dallas will get the money for that.

Miles said more discussions will need to be held with trustees and with the community over the next few years. Miles is hopeful that there will be some kind of traction in the Legislature that will boost funding for pre-K.

But no one is really sure exactly what to expect from Austin this session, particularly in the way of funding as a school finance lawsuit makes its way through to the Texas Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama speaks at a town hall meeting on Monday where 60 districts, including Dallas and Fort Worth, pledge to improve education outcomes for minority male students.

Today 60 school urban school districts — including Dallas and Fort Worth — committed to improve academic achievement for black and Latino male students at a White House event.

The pledge is part of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper imitative announced in February, a 5-year initiative will provide $200 million for programs aiming to help educational outcomes for such students.

The districts commit to making sure pre-school better serves young male students of color; keep data and monitor the progress of these students; intervene at early warning signs; reduce the disproportionate number of such students who are absent, suspended, expelled and inappropriately placed in special education classes; transform high schools that serve these students; and increase the number of black and Latino young men who complete college aid forms.

About a third of the country’s black male students and nearly 40 percent of its Hispanic male students attend a school in one an urban district that is part of the Council of the Great City Schools, which is leading the pledge. Other Texas districts participating include Austin, El Paso, and Houston.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education found in 2012 that the national black male graduation rate was 52 percent and 58 percent for Hispanic male students, compared to 78 percent for white male students. Texas rates closely mirrored that, according to the report.

My colleague Matthew Haag posted earlier on the news conference that Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings had today where he discussed the rollout to the effort to turn Dallas ISD into a home-rule district. Rawlings asked that the conversation focus on four questions:

-What are the true DISD performance numbers?
-Are there ways to improve the governance structure?
-What tools could the superintendent be given that he doesn’t currently have because of state mandates?
-How can the district retain the best teachers possible?

May I suggest a fifth? Of the possible changes available under home-rule, what evidence is there that any have made a significant difference in education outcomes elsewhere in the country, in a district similar enough to Dallas to make the comparison useful?

Lots of districts out there. Not a ton of experimentation with, say, governance, for the largest of them. Only five of the largest 27 districts (with at least 100,000 students) use anything but the vanilla standard of elected school board picks superintendent. (Here’s the list.)

But smaller districts are trying some things. Maybe there’s some kind of data or anecdote that would apply here? And for non-governance, there are lots of possibilities. If there are examples of evidence for significant successes using any of the changes and freedoms available under the Texas home-rule law, that would be useful to toss into the conversation.

(And yeah, that’s also a good question for journalists to pursue. So yeah, I’m trying to crowdsource our work a bit. Stay tuned.)

Similar questions address the percentage of third-graders considered proficient in reading and in both reading and math. For all three the source offered is the same.

Verdict: False.

Explanation: There’s a problem with using the “final recommended” figure to assess last year’s students: The state says that isn’t fair – and isn’t doing it.

Crawl into the weeds a bit. When STAAR was first implemented, the decision was made to phase-in the standards for what is considered passing or high-achieving. Here’s why:

“A phase-in period has been implemented for STAAR performance standards to provide school districts with time to adjust instruction, provide new professional development, increase teacher effectiveness, and close knowledge gaps. A four-year, two-step phase-in for Level II will be in place for all general STAAR assessments… The phase-in for Level III: Advanced Academic Performance will allow an appropriate amount of time for students and school districts to adjust to the new assessment requirements, since this level of performance is required for students to graduate under the Distinguished Achievement Program (DAP).”

And then, last August, education commissioner Michael Williams sent out this:

Through commissioner of education rules, TEA is proposing to maintain the phase-in 1 performance standards for the STAAR program for the 2013–2014 school year. There are two primary reasons for this proposal:
For grades 3–8, schools did not receive performance-level data on students until January 2013, which limited the time available to adjust instruction prior to the spring 2013 test administrations.

For all grades and courses, schools did not have access either to a released test form (as they had in the first year of TAKS) or to the associated item-level analysis for their students.

While I firmly believe that Texas students are capable of reaching the high expectations reflected in the final recommended performance standards, I also recognize that the development of strong, coherent, vertically aligned instructional programs requires time and sustained effort. Extending the phase-in 1 standard through the 2013–2014 school year gives schools additional time to raise the level of student performance.

So by the standards the TEA considers appropriate, 58 percent of 2012-2013 fourth graders hit the Level II standard for reading last year. Which isn’t exactly cause for celebration, but a long way from 22 percent.

Bottom line: SOPS is using a standard that the state says is unfair to rate test-score proficiency as evidence that the district needs major changes. Doing so makes student performance look much worse than the TEA says is justified.

Support Our Public Schools, the group pushing for Dallas ISD to become a home-rule district, continues to post questions and answers on its Facebook site. One interesting entry today has to do with alternative district governance:

Would home rule change the role of board trustees?

A: It could. The new chartering document adopted by the Home Rule Commission could leave the roles and responsibilities of the board of trustees completely un-touched. Or it could change their roles and responsibilities.

Some possible changes include:
• Limiting the role of the board to setting policy and approving the budget, while giving the responsibility for hiring and firing the Superintendent to a different body (perhaps two different boards).
• Giving the board authority to hire more than just a Superintendent (and Auditor), and changing the role of the Superintendent. For example, the board could have the authority to hire two people: a Chief of Schools, and a Chief of Operations, the latter with control of finance and operations, the former with control over principals and schools.

There are certainly many other possibilities, but we have seen these two suggested or implemented elsewhere.

So what other kinds of governance are out there? I checked on the 26 other districts with at least 100,000 students, figuring that districts much smaller that Dallas ISD wouldn’t necessarily be a fair comparison. I found only five that use anything but basically what we have now: Elected board picks the superintendent.

Support Our Public Schools, the group pushing the Dallas ISD home-rule petition, has a Facebook page. Earlier today, this got posted:

Thank you to everyone who came to one of our town hall meetings on Thursday. We had a lot of good questions at these meetings. We will post answers here to every question asked, and we will also add them to our website.

Here is the first question:

Q: There is not enough time before the November election to develop the charter, get public input, and hold community meetings (unless the charter has actually already been drafted).

A: Support Our Public Schools has not developed a draft charter. Given the lack of a draft charter, the concerns about getting everything done in time for November may be accurate. The Home Rule Commission will likely not start meeting before June (given the time required to gather petition signatures and the time required for the Board of Trustees to appoint the Commission members). In order to get on the November ballot, the Commission would need to finish its work by August. This is possible, but it is a tight timeline. It is our hope that we would gather recommendations for charter elements from community members in the coming months, and provide those recommendations as a starting point for the Home Rule Commission to begin its deliberations. If the Commission does not complete the charter in time for the November election, the law provides that they have a year to develop the charter.

The controversial proposal to revamp governance at the Dallas ISD and possibly its trustee system will be discussed at two more locations tonight.

The group leading the initiative, Support Our Public Schools, launched a petition earlier this month to change DISD to a home-rule district. Supporters include Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, who walked out of a heated meeting last week with Hispanics.

Rawlings spoke about the need for a higher performing district and added: “If the Latino community doesn’t want to do it. It is dead because the future of this city is going to be driven by the Latino community.”

About 70 percent of the huge district’s students are Hispanic. A large amount of those children come from immigrant families. So no surprise that a meeting will be held tonight in Pleasant Grove, where many immigrants live. The 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. meeting will be held in Room 108/109 at Eastfield College at 802 S. Buckner Blvd. It’s hosted by the Southeast Dallas Hispanic Chamber.

Another meeting will be held from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the True Lee Church at 3907 Bertrand Ave. in southern Dallas. It’s hosted by the Rev. Don Parish.

As we’ve reported, a third meeting will be held from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Preston Royal Library at 5626 Royal Lane in north Dallas. State Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, and Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, will be there.

For Dallas ISD to become a home-rule district, 5 percent of district residents must sign a petition, which then requires the trustees to appoint a 15-member charter committee to design the new system.

The voters must give approval to the charter in an election with a 25 percent voter turnout. Support Our Public Schools wants to get the charter on the November ballot along with the governor race.

Hilda Duarte, a community liaison at a public charter school, was at the meeting with the mayor and said it quickly got out of hand. “He’s about to address you and he is already getting attacked,” Duarte said.

“We need change. DISD isn’t adequately serving children.”

Here’s more from the audio the meeting with Rawlings sent anonymously to The Dallas Morning News.

——————————————————————————–Dianne Solís is a general assignment reporter and frequently writes about immigration. Follow her on Twitter at @disolis